Seven mortal sins

I am definitely not religious, but a wise saying is wise no matter the source. These seven are really the fibers of an ugly character for a human being:

Luxuria (lust), Gula (gluttony), Avaritia (greed), Acedia (sloth), Ira (wrath, anger), Invidia (envy), and Superbia (pride).

It is funny that Se7en, a movie about crimes with the themes based on these sins in the most disgusting forms, is to remind us of the existence of these, one after the other.

Essential Vista utitlity software

Firewall: My favourite firewall, zonealarm, is not compatible with Vista yet, so I have opt for a new one: PC tools firewall (see its help here). It is working great, and the rule-based access permissions of it for sure is more advanced. Vista's firewall now supports both inbound and outbound control and should be sufficient when behind a firewall router already, but seems not strong enough for a laptop.

Keyboard shortcuts: A list of very handy and useful shortcuts to make life easier. To a complete list see Windows Vista Help Keyboard shortcuts. A brief list is as follows:

Managing Windows
Win+Tab Flip 3D
Ctrl+Win+Tab Persistent Flip 3D
Win+T Cycle through applications on taskbar (showing its live preview)
Win+M Minimize all open windows
Win+Shift+M Undo all window minimization
Win+D Toggle showing the desktop

Starting Programs
Win+1 Open the first program on your Quick Launch bar
Win+2 Open the second program on your Quick Launch bar
Win+n Open the nth program on your Quick Launch bar
Win+U Open the ease of access center
Win+F Open the search window
Win+E Open Explorer
Win+R Open the Run window
Ctrl+Shift+Esc Open Windows Task Manager

Logging In And Out
Win, RightArrow Sleep
Win+L Locks computer
Viewing Folders With Explorer
Alt+LeftArrow Go back
Alt+RightArrow Go forward
Alt+UpArrow Go up a directory
Alt+D Move focus to address bar
Alt+D, Tab Move focus to search bar
Ctrl+Mousewheel Change the view type (extra large, small, list view, detail, etc.)

Windows Sidebar And Gadgets
Move focus to Sidebar Win+Space
Cycle through visible gadgets Win+G

The story of Acer's aweful costumer service

-------- Excerpt --------

Problem: An Acer Aspire notebook with Vista OS wakes automatically a few seconds after being put in sleep/hibernate modes

Solution:

1. No device should be set to wake the system --> use the POWERCFG command
   
2. Make sure the IPv6 option is disabled. (This is the main reason that it took me 2 weeks to figure it out)

-------- The full story --------

I am writing this to have a record solution for maybe another poor user with a similar problem. After 4 months of waiting with the slow procedure of Acer sending me the "free" Vista upgrade for my Acer notebook, I had the chance to install it on my brand new system last week.
Everything went well, except that the system wakes itself automatically after sleep/hibernate modes.
I tried everything, from using "powercfg –devicequery wake_armed" to getting a list of any device that might wake it up (and then disabling any one armed, "powercfg -devicedisablewake (device name from -devicequery)"), to disabling every possible device listed on the device manager one by one. I also played with all the possible parameters of the power management options: Vista's and Acer empowering ones. But the problem still existed.

So I decided to email the costumer service, because my suspicion was maybe the BIOS upgrade didn't go well and I wasn't sure what the latest version number is. After two very useless and longly separated email correspondences, they directed me to call them. When I called, they provided no assistance at all: after 10 minutes of questions, he said that this line is for hardware related problems and I should call their billable line ($3/m, hello ?!?).

It is ok for them not to be able to solve the problem or suggest anything, what I am pissed off about is their lack of mere attempt to help, and mere courage to say they don't know ... This is a brand new system being upgrade with the package they shipped. I am usually adamant to contact the costumer services, only as the very very very last resort. Too bad such a good product comes with such a bad costumer service.

Anyways, while rechecking everything I suspected that maybe there is some compatibility or setting problem with the Vista's newly added feature: IPv6 capability. And ... boom ... that was it. I disabled the IPv6 option and everything is fine now. I suspect that although in the BIOS and the network card's properties wake-on-LAN was disabled, IPv6 was messing emerying up.

Links:

• Acer email support
  
• Acer Europe (Better organization of downloadable stuff)
• Note: in order to open a cmd with administrator previlages, you need to hold ctrl+shift and then click on cmd on the all program list , this is true even when logged with an administrator user account
  

Deleting adamant files in Windows

I am sure once in a while you have run into a bad apple file which refuses to be deleted. I just had a few of such and after many efforts finally succeed. Here are some notes on this.

1) The simplest form is when the file is in use somehow, and that is why you cannot delete it. Particularly, video files come under this category. If even after closing the suspected programs still you are not able to delete it, reboot and you should be fine. If not: use either of the followings:

• Reboot into safe mode
  
• Use the moveonboot free-ware program (Good tutorial).
• Or follow this method
  

2) Another type happened to me due to an adware that affected a file in the folder. I deleted the infected file but the containing folder was giving me headache to be deleted. It would return "file cannot find" error message. The trick that works for these files or folders is to cut the folder and then paste it to the recycle bin. Then use recycle bins properties to decrease its capacity to zero, click ok. When the bad file is gone, restore the recycle bin's properties back to the original.

If you need to use the command line, note that the actual address of the recycle bin:
"On the older FAT file systems (typically Windows 98 and prior), it is located in Drive:\RECYCLED. In the NTFS file system (Windows 2000, XP, NT) it can be found in Drive:\RECYCLER, with the exception of Windows Vista which stores it in the Drive:\$Recycle.Bin folder."

3) The hardest type is when you want to delete a file that has a different ownership. This happened to me while using a shared folder being accessed by a remote computer, creating a guest ownership.This happened because I disabled and then enabled sharing of that folder and somehow the old guest wasn't the same as the new guest ownership (!!) You can see the owner of any file by using the detailed view mode and then using "view\choose details..." to check owner. None of the above methods works in this case. You only are able to modify such a file if you access it under that ownership (see here). Setting moveonboot to delete such file fails at the time of assignment.

Whisky: Johnnie Walker Scotch

The smell of it, the color, the taste and ... the feeling. Isn't Whisky awesome? Here is a short research result on it.
My favorites are Johnnie Walker (Scotch), Crown royal (Canadian), and Jack Daniel's (Tennessee).

Johnnie Walker is just mesmerizing and my favorite of all. I have mostly drunk the red label (the world's most popular whisky), the cheaper of the three labels: Red, Black and Blue. Still I have been quite happy with it. At this moment, our liquor store sells a 750 ml bottle of Red label for $29, Black label for $48, and Blue label for $220. Detailed descriptions are here. There are also some more recent labels: Green (15 year old, $66) and Gold (18 year old, $85)

Whisky is actually a broad range of alcoholic beverages with 4 main types, more on this here. It also explains the two different spellings of Whisky versus Whiskey.

Coffee! The greatest antioxidant

I am always confused entering Blenz, Starbucks, etc. There are so many different types, roasts, and brands. It is also as confusing when I am choosing coffee for my own coffee maker. Here are some interesting simple facts to have in mind.

There are two main types of coffee. The most common ones are Coffea arabica being the most espensive one and the other robusta. "Other species include Coffea liberica and Coffea esliaca, believed to be indigenous to Liberia and southern Sudan respectively."
Coffee roasting can be classified under 4 categories for darkness: Light (e.g. Cinnamon roast), medium (e.g. American, preferred in North America), dark (e.g. French) and darkest (e.g. Italian).

Coffee can be prepared in a number of different styles. Coffee makers requires drip fine grind coffee. Espresso need very fine grind (uniform tiny particles). Coffee press or French press, in the contrary, needs large particles. This is where a good grinder stands out from a cheaper one.

This article describes with illustrations how to prepare coffee using a press pot. And see how espresso machines work.

Starbucks defines 4 main elements contributing to brewing a great coffee as Proportion, Grind, Water and Freshness.

• Proportion: " two tablespoons of ground coffee (10 grams) for each six fluid ounces (180 milliliters) of water" then adjusted to the tast.
• Grind: "The shorter the brewing process, the finer the grind ... for instance, coffee ground for an espresso machine should be very fine, in part because the brew cycle is only 19 to 22 seconds long. But for a coffee press, the coffee should be coarse ground."
• Water: "Use fresh, cold water heated to just off the boil."
  
• Freshness: "The enemies of coffee are oxygen, light, heat, and moisture." So keep the ground coffee for a short time in "opaque, airtight container at room temperature," And the original box, air tight in the fridge.

Canada's Food guide

This is a brief but sweat guide for healthy living, covering basic concepts for proper eating and exercise.

• Food guide in pdf

• The main website

GnuPG and email encryption

There is a free package GnuPG that is installed on a computer and provides encryption and electronic signature in general and for email. There are costume plugins for most common email clients (Eudora, outlook, ...), for Thunderbird you need to install a sort of under development Mozilla extension, Enigmail.

Just download GnuPG, check its integrity by using sha1deep for checksums, and then install it. Then download the Mozilla extension and install it to Thunderbird. A new menu item will appear as OpenPGP.

OpenPGP will run you through a wizard the first time you use it. You need to input a pass phrase that protects your private key while the public key is shared with the recipient. It works perfectly fine and can be set to sign or encrypt per request or automatically.

The problem is that the recipient should have similar package installed in order to decrypt the code to see your email and/or verify your signature.

Links:

1. Thunderbird FAQ
2. Enigmail extension
3. GnuPG (download, windows FTP (SHA1: b34cb9678550d2acd5e988bc2ba9b20bfe361027))
   

Mandriva it is!

It is ironic that just when Vista is here, I am thinking of going back to Linux at least as a second operating system. I love XP and am going to use it as my prime OS, since it is very versatile and supports 3 softwares I primarily use and are only available for Windows. I am going to get Vista for free as an upgrade soon too.

I am a regular Solaris users, but since 3 years ago where I stopped doing system administrative part time work, I have been using Linux only occasionally.

I have been researching to what Linux to pick: OpenSuse, Mandirva, Redhat or Debian. I have used Redhat quite a lot and also Debain but as a compute server not a as desktop. After reading here and there I decided to go with OpenSuse or Mandriva. My first pick was SUSE but I run into many problems. I had to download it a few times the md5deep checksums were not matching. Finally I had the Opensuse live DVD as well as the x-86-64 images, but neither worked well. I get kernel panics every time. I seriously wasted too much time on it so concurrently I gave Mandriva a test. I tried Mandirva one first, as it is both live and install. It worked perfectly and got all my devices on my AMD Turion 64 X2 recognized. I then downloaded the 2007 DVD and boom installed easily on a external harddrive (I didn't want to mess with my NTFS windows drive and so boot loader was a problem if I wanted to install it on a partition of the main hard drive).
I am loving it very much: installation was a breeze, system is stable, lots of free softwares and games

AND

With the pre-installed 3D desktop, ..... boy oh boy when I get my Vista in a few weeks I don't think it is going to be a wow (as advertised by MS) to me anymore, no matter how well is the eye candies. (I am more of practicality and not into eye candy but if both are combined, why not).

However, I could not get drak3d to work on my laptop, as it complains that it doesn't have required hardware! It is a premium ready machine, why ...